Dura Automotive Files for Bankruptcy

Lynn Tilton, the flamboyant owner of Dura Automotive Systems LLC, has put the company’s U.S. operations into bankruptcy so she can buy them back through a court-supervised auction.

Tilton says the maneuver is necessary because Dura’s access to capital has been blocked by continuing legal disputes with creditors over ownership of other companies she controls, Bloomberg News reports. She aims to retain the company’s workforce, assets and trade obligations.

Tilton claims to have used an array of investment funds to revive more than 240 distressed companies since 2000. Three of those funds, called Zohar, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.

Tilton’s New York City-based Patriarch Partners LLC acquired Dura for $120 million in 2010, less than two years after the Detroit-area auto parts supplier emerged from bankruptcy. The new bankruptcy filing lists $130 million in funded debt, according to Bloomberg.

A year ago, Patriarch Partners was shopping Dura in a possible deal worth $1 billion, sources told Bloomberg at the time. The holding company says it owns stakes in 75 companies in 14 industrial sectors.